An Experimental Phonetic Study of Rhythm in Standard Korean

한국어의 리듬에 관한 실험음성학적 연구

This paper aims to explore the rhythmic phenomena of standard Korean by an experimental phonetic method. A total of 16 informants taking part in this experiment were divided into four groups : old males(OM) and old females(OF) in their fifties and young males(YM) and young females(YF) in their twenties. The informants were asked to read speech data consisting of two rhythmic units, each of which began with a stressed syllable with a long wowel. Starting with the frame / 'ma:1 'ma:nta /, the first rhythmic unit was expanded up to five syllables in all while keeping the second rhythmic unit constant with a view to investigate the pattern of increase in the interstress time interval. The results of this study are as follows: 1. There is a considerable difference between yen and old generations with respect to the duration of interstress interval . The young generation tends to speak faster than the old generation. This observation is supported by difference in the interstress intervals as exhibited by OM(389.66), OF(473), YM(275.55), YF(285.83) in the test frame '말 많다' ['ma:1 'ma:nta]. 2. Young and old generations showed a different tendency in the increase rate of duration between mono-syllables and polysyllables. In other words, the rhythm of young generation shows the tendency of syllable-timed language whereas that of old generation clearly leans towards the stressed-timed language.